This resonated with me heavily. I am an avid junk journaler and “hoarder” of memories. I have a sort of irrational (but in my mind, very rational) fear of being forgotten. Not only by others but also by myself. When I am 80 I’d like to look back at who I am now. 20 years old just trying to figure out how to do this whole life thing. I’d like to sit on my porch and read my journals and smile at the things I taped in there. The receipts, the chocolate wrappers, the pictures, the business cards, everything. They mean something to me now, and even if they don’t mean something to me later, this version of me cares about them and so I want to keep them. If one day I am laying in bed with dementia, I’d like to be able to read my journals and remember even just for a moment. I’d also like my children, my grandchildren to have documentation of me. Not just official papers stating that I existed, but pieces of me, my life, who I am as a person. I do not want to be forgotten.
This was so lovely to read, thank you. It really resonated with me. Something I think about a lot, is how special it is that I can flip through my great, great grandmother’s scrap book from the late 1800s. Touch a dried flower and a feather that she thought was pretty enough to keep. Read notes she wrote about birthday cards and what the weather was like.
She had a huge postcard collection that my Nan continued, each one has little notes about the weather and what some obscure family member did on that day. The everyday mundane is so deeply fascinating to me. It feels like I’m reaching back decades by touching the same pages she carefully curated. Imagine your great great granddaughter doing the same with your archives. Beautiful thought.
I love this! As somebody who has never had a minimalist phase I found this really validating - here’s to keeping all our little memories in physical forms <3
this was so nice to read, i also found myself in a minimalist marie kondo phase lol and while I do take in some aspects of her teachings like being a more a mindful consumer, at my core i love collecting keeping every little thing and documenting, scanning, etc. ^_^
I love the way you write, how you’re both writing about nothing and everything at the same time, and I feel like I’m getting to talk to a friend I haven’t seen in a long time. And I loved reading your reflections on personal archiving 💜
yes to all of this !! i've always had a strong inclination to collect (hoard) + document, but only really let myself lean into it the past couple of years. i so relate to indecision of how and where to put things, the tip around making things as close to the time of experience as possible (or else it doesnt resonate anymore / the details fade!), and your friend's part time job scanning things (i too have the same obsession, i recently scanned 200+ red packets my family collected, and have plans for other large family archiving projects.) thank you for writing this!
The part about scrapbooking and keeping an archive of yourself is an interesting one! I'm particularly curious about how you approach archiving digitally. I used to have a LOT of photos of various things - I went through a phase where I'd take a lot of photos when I was out and about, things I thought looked cool and whatnot. But I realized that a lot of the photos weren't really special; I might have taken them on whim because I thought it looked cool in the moment, but in reality, never really shared or kept them. They were usually of mundane things in life. Things that you might only catch a glimmer of a smile when you look back on them, if even.
A few years ago, like you mention, I went through a minimalism phase. While having tens of thousands of photos sounds great on paper, storage, while cheap, isn't free, and I didn't want to have this archive mixed in with the photos I really wanted to see. So I went through and cleaned out anything that wasn't memorable (involving or including people), novel (a picture that a similar one couldn't be found online), particularly aesthetic or notable.
Going through that cleanup changed a lot about the way I took photos moving forward as well. I often found myself asking myself "are you really going to look at this ever again" before taking a photo, out of instinct. I delete emails wherever possible when their purpose has past. Sometimes I stop myself from posting stuff because I think it's just going to be more digital stuff in the future to wade through, and "do you really want to be known for that". In the past, I'd be able to basically go "yeah that's what happened the day that picture was taken" throughout past years. But now, the pictures no longer tell a continuous story like that.
Reading this makes me want to rethink this. I want to think that there are probably things I'd wished I'd kept/taken a photo of that I didn't, out of habit from trying to be minimalist. But I think that it's harder to start creating than it is to stop, especially because I don't post much to social media anymore.
I'm curious what your thoughts on this are - does your willingness to collect influence the decisions to consciously try to preserve what you see around you in your day to day? How do you balance the need for quick access for the need to preserve, without relegating the archive to a hidden corner that you rarely visit, particularly in a digital context?
great questions, at present I have about 4k unread emails and 46k photos. it's kind of insane, and there was one point where i was an inbox zero kind of person and i think what happened was life got busy for a while and i didn't maintain my deletion regimen, and the emails just kept piling up. i still answer all important emails quickly, but stopped caring for deleting all the promotion/irrelevant ones etc and now it's gotten to this point - email is one area i think its okay to delete a lot of things because you dont really get a story out of a majority of them, i'm just currently too lazy to set aside a few hours to clear out everything. these days, if i want to find an email i just search for it with keywords i remember, my memory tends to not fail me there.
when it comes to my photos, it's also a bit of a struggle because i haven't cleared out anything in a long time. atleast not in the sense where i sit down and actively try to delete things i don't care for - i usually only delete images right after i've taken them if i dont like them, but if i forget to do that or dont have time in the moment, they dont really get tended to after. there's not really a reason for this, it just doesn't bother me enough to also set aside the time to clear it out. i already pay for 2tb of cloud storage and reducing the images wont change that, so i dont really feel this pressure to delete. if i were to start doing so though, i would probably use some apps to auto filter out duplicates etc.
the point of the archive is for it to be a place of reference when the opportunity arises. i tend to remember the things i've done based on the month, sometimes i know the exact date. so when i reference memories, i can usually quite easily pinpoint where the images are in my library if not by date, then by some other identifier. i.e. i can search a specific person (i often do this when i make birthday shoutout stories for friends) to find our photos there.
i have indeed recently thought about when i do or do not look back on my photos/videos, and yes that has affected how i capture/document. but still, i find that i usually regret not having captured than i regret having captured then needing to sift through it later, so i often err on the side of capturing but as long as it doesnt detract from my present value of experiencing it.
long answer short: i try to preserve everything i can as long as its doing less harm than good, i solve for quick access by relying on my memory and searching
Love the “my home is a living museum featuring the history of me,” so true!! I’ve never been one to buy any souvenirs, but recently been thinking about creative mementos / decors to bring back as a reminder of a memory or a story from my travels
love the archiving aspirations :)!!!! 💕 sarah manguso's ongoingness (she wrote everything down for many decades) was a really interesting read for me on this topic
I'm reading this in April but it's funny cause at the exact same time I started my scrapbook kind of like yours with everything I find daily and I've been really proud of myself to keep doing it long after the new year resolutions were gone!
This resonated with me heavily. I am an avid junk journaler and “hoarder” of memories. I have a sort of irrational (but in my mind, very rational) fear of being forgotten. Not only by others but also by myself. When I am 80 I’d like to look back at who I am now. 20 years old just trying to figure out how to do this whole life thing. I’d like to sit on my porch and read my journals and smile at the things I taped in there. The receipts, the chocolate wrappers, the pictures, the business cards, everything. They mean something to me now, and even if they don’t mean something to me later, this version of me cares about them and so I want to keep them. If one day I am laying in bed with dementia, I’d like to be able to read my journals and remember even just for a moment. I’d also like my children, my grandchildren to have documentation of me. Not just official papers stating that I existed, but pieces of me, my life, who I am as a person. I do not want to be forgotten.
this was a beautiful comment to read, thank you for sharing and reading :')
This was so lovely to read, thank you. It really resonated with me. Something I think about a lot, is how special it is that I can flip through my great, great grandmother’s scrap book from the late 1800s. Touch a dried flower and a feather that she thought was pretty enough to keep. Read notes she wrote about birthday cards and what the weather was like.
She had a huge postcard collection that my Nan continued, each one has little notes about the weather and what some obscure family member did on that day. The everyday mundane is so deeply fascinating to me. It feels like I’m reaching back decades by touching the same pages she carefully curated. Imagine your great great granddaughter doing the same with your archives. Beautiful thought.
thank you for sharing this, such a lovely archive it is you have :')
EXACTLY!! you wove my thoughts better than i ever could! i feel so seen x
love it!! also im totally stealing the different sections in your posts
I love this! As somebody who has never had a minimalist phase I found this really validating - here’s to keeping all our little memories in physical forms <3
this was so nice to read, i also found myself in a minimalist marie kondo phase lol and while I do take in some aspects of her teachings like being a more a mindful consumer, at my core i love collecting keeping every little thing and documenting, scanning, etc. ^_^
Kel! Come to the Balkans next time :) and thanks for the lovely writing
I love the way you write, how you’re both writing about nothing and everything at the same time, and I feel like I’m getting to talk to a friend I haven’t seen in a long time. And I loved reading your reflections on personal archiving 💜
this means so much to me, thank you :") <3
yes to all of this !! i've always had a strong inclination to collect (hoard) + document, but only really let myself lean into it the past couple of years. i so relate to indecision of how and where to put things, the tip around making things as close to the time of experience as possible (or else it doesnt resonate anymore / the details fade!), and your friend's part time job scanning things (i too have the same obsession, i recently scanned 200+ red packets my family collected, and have plans for other large family archiving projects.) thank you for writing this!
i did see your lai see project piece and loved it!!! i sent it to friends actually haha big fan
The part about scrapbooking and keeping an archive of yourself is an interesting one! I'm particularly curious about how you approach archiving digitally. I used to have a LOT of photos of various things - I went through a phase where I'd take a lot of photos when I was out and about, things I thought looked cool and whatnot. But I realized that a lot of the photos weren't really special; I might have taken them on whim because I thought it looked cool in the moment, but in reality, never really shared or kept them. They were usually of mundane things in life. Things that you might only catch a glimmer of a smile when you look back on them, if even.
A few years ago, like you mention, I went through a minimalism phase. While having tens of thousands of photos sounds great on paper, storage, while cheap, isn't free, and I didn't want to have this archive mixed in with the photos I really wanted to see. So I went through and cleaned out anything that wasn't memorable (involving or including people), novel (a picture that a similar one couldn't be found online), particularly aesthetic or notable.
Going through that cleanup changed a lot about the way I took photos moving forward as well. I often found myself asking myself "are you really going to look at this ever again" before taking a photo, out of instinct. I delete emails wherever possible when their purpose has past. Sometimes I stop myself from posting stuff because I think it's just going to be more digital stuff in the future to wade through, and "do you really want to be known for that". In the past, I'd be able to basically go "yeah that's what happened the day that picture was taken" throughout past years. But now, the pictures no longer tell a continuous story like that.
Reading this makes me want to rethink this. I want to think that there are probably things I'd wished I'd kept/taken a photo of that I didn't, out of habit from trying to be minimalist. But I think that it's harder to start creating than it is to stop, especially because I don't post much to social media anymore.
I'm curious what your thoughts on this are - does your willingness to collect influence the decisions to consciously try to preserve what you see around you in your day to day? How do you balance the need for quick access for the need to preserve, without relegating the archive to a hidden corner that you rarely visit, particularly in a digital context?
great questions, at present I have about 4k unread emails and 46k photos. it's kind of insane, and there was one point where i was an inbox zero kind of person and i think what happened was life got busy for a while and i didn't maintain my deletion regimen, and the emails just kept piling up. i still answer all important emails quickly, but stopped caring for deleting all the promotion/irrelevant ones etc and now it's gotten to this point - email is one area i think its okay to delete a lot of things because you dont really get a story out of a majority of them, i'm just currently too lazy to set aside a few hours to clear out everything. these days, if i want to find an email i just search for it with keywords i remember, my memory tends to not fail me there.
when it comes to my photos, it's also a bit of a struggle because i haven't cleared out anything in a long time. atleast not in the sense where i sit down and actively try to delete things i don't care for - i usually only delete images right after i've taken them if i dont like them, but if i forget to do that or dont have time in the moment, they dont really get tended to after. there's not really a reason for this, it just doesn't bother me enough to also set aside the time to clear it out. i already pay for 2tb of cloud storage and reducing the images wont change that, so i dont really feel this pressure to delete. if i were to start doing so though, i would probably use some apps to auto filter out duplicates etc.
the point of the archive is for it to be a place of reference when the opportunity arises. i tend to remember the things i've done based on the month, sometimes i know the exact date. so when i reference memories, i can usually quite easily pinpoint where the images are in my library if not by date, then by some other identifier. i.e. i can search a specific person (i often do this when i make birthday shoutout stories for friends) to find our photos there.
i have indeed recently thought about when i do or do not look back on my photos/videos, and yes that has affected how i capture/document. but still, i find that i usually regret not having captured than i regret having captured then needing to sift through it later, so i often err on the side of capturing but as long as it doesnt detract from my present value of experiencing it.
long answer short: i try to preserve everything i can as long as its doing less harm than good, i solve for quick access by relying on my memory and searching
Love the “my home is a living museum featuring the history of me,” so true!! I’ve never been one to buy any souvenirs, but recently been thinking about creative mementos / decors to bring back as a reminder of a memory or a story from my travels
excited to see you be eclectic in 2025 ⚡️
excited to grow together in 2025 <3
love the archiving aspirations :)!!!! 💕 sarah manguso's ongoingness (she wrote everything down for many decades) was a really interesting read for me on this topic
ohh will check out!! thanks for the rec jess and thanks for reading <3 happiest of new years
I'm reading this in April but it's funny cause at the exact same time I started my scrapbook kind of like yours with everything I find daily and I've been really proud of myself to keep doing it long after the new year resolutions were gone!